10 June 2009

This is my first proper bookbinding effort. The leather is a deep plum colour, with olive buff leather 2" squares on the side, sewn with pink 18/3 linen thread. The journal is A5 size (15cmx21cm or 8 1/4"x6") with 110 gsm sketch paper pages.

It is based on medieval limp binding techniques. This type of binding (limp, not my specific pattern) was the most common form of binding found in medieval and early modern archives. However, because it lack the sexiness of the leather tooled and gem encrusted bindings, very little work has been done on this type of binding system.

I am going to use this a sketchbook for more book designs.

I did learn a few things, including that my quires (sets of pages) were spaced too far apart. This does have benefit, as the pages lay very flat and I can paste in all sorts of things and have plenty of room for the book to expand without breaking.